It’s always so important to get on with everyone you work with, especially those in close proximity. After all you do spend about 60% of your week surrounded with your colleagues, so it’s imperative to get on with them, right? Well yes. What you don’t want to is to be the occasional bad apple in the bunch by being an insufferable c*nt, because that just kills the whole ecosystem. If you don’t know an office dickhead, there may be chance that it’s you! Avoid being that with these top seven pieces of advice, even being one of these is bad enough! If you do all seven, you really don’t deserve to have a job, and how you’re employed is nothing short of a miracle!

Are you any of these? If you are then sort it out!

7. Don’t be a freeloader

Everybody brings in cakes to the office; especially on their birthday, but other times it’s nice just to bring in goodies for your friends. However, don’t be the one prick who just helps himself and never supplies for anyone else. The sort of person that will only raid the communal supplies because it’s free and they don’t need to fit the bill at all. Helping yourself to other people’s office food essentially is stealing, and that’s just not cool. So don’t be surprised if people exclude you future biscuit distribution.

6. Don’t be a lazy and dishonest

You’re all there to do a job at the end of the day, that’s what puts food on the table. But neglecting to help out and basically rely on everyone else to pick up the workload is frankly disgraceful. What makes it worse is when you try and cover up the fact that you’re a lazy shite by fabricating work to make it look like you’ve been busy when in reality you’ve been fucking about on the internet googling trivial non-work-related nonsense or playing flash games, and then have the gall to make out you’ve been studying or doing research. Sleeping at your desk is even worse, especially when everyone around you is really busy. Don’t you think everyone else around will notice? Besides, in this modern age we all have internet history and HTML logs, so we can see what you’ve been doing. Lazy prick.

5. Don’t suck up to your superiors or be a squinny

Getting on really well with your boss or supervisor is fine, but agreeing with everything they say is pathetic, especially if it’s trying to cover a short coming of any kind of tangible personality. But hanging on every word they’re saying just to make it seem that you’re interested is beyond contempt, especially when you play dumb just to milk some kind of favour, like asking them “how to walk a dog” or “what a muffin is”. That’s just retarded, and quite frankly, downright pathetic. Above all else, it’s manipulative in the worst passive-aggressive kind, and nine times out of ten, they will see through you. It’s also called being a sycophant, and everyone else will just think you’re a total bell-end. Squinnying is even worse, I mean come on, we’ve all left school, but running up to your boss like you’re telling on a sibling to your mummy is something that should be left on the playground, not in the office environment.

4. Don’t stab your friends in the back to better yourself

Solidarity is important in an office, but almost creating a bond between a particular colleague is normal and rewarding, especially when you work together and subsequently hang out outside of work. That’s what being friends is all about. This transcends a work relationship and should supersede the goings on inside the office. So abusing that trust and friendship by stitching your friend up just to make yourself look good is simply deplorable. Bad mouthing a friend to your superiors just to make you look better is the work of scum, and scum like that don’t deserve friends.

3. Don’t butt into everyone’s conversations or be offensive to everyone around you

There is nothing more annoying than having a private conversation and some idiot keeps interjecting with nonsense, especially when you’re not even talking to them. Engaging other people in the conversation is fine, if you’re talking to them. Butting in however, is not cool, especially if you have no idea what they’re talking about. Transparently googling the content of the conversation and then butting in with what you’ve read as if you know it yourself really is the most pathetic way of trying to invite yourself into a conversation that has absolutely nothing to do with you. Commenting on people’s ethnicity, intellectual standing, medical history or personal appearance as joke when they’re not talking to you is particularly offensive, and let me tell you now, it’s also not funny. It just means you’re an offensive prick. Making jokes about multiple sclerosis or people being Hindus, that sort of thing, is totally not on, and how they’ve not had a disciplinary yet is anyone’s guess. Trolling on the internet is one thing, trolling people in the office just makes you into the office pariah.

2. Don’t stink and observe personal hygiene

Whether it’s an open plan office or closed booths, nobody wants to sit next to someone who smells. Personal hygiene is compulsory, not optional. Going an entire week without showering or having a bath is just disgusting. Using the old classic adolescent trick of just spraying your clothes with Lynx just doesn’t cut it. Offending everybody else’s sense of smell is inconsiderate and frankly offensive. Most places of work have a bathroom or shower facility so if you didn’t have time at home or even if you did but jogged/cycled into work, fucking use it! There’s no excuse for smelling like a rotten armpit cooked in piss.

1. Don’t be a know-it-all when you don’t know what you’re talking about

Bullshitters. They piss me off the most. The only thing worse than being a fucking know-it-all, is thinking you know what you’re talking about, but in reality it’s all smoke and mirrors. The problem with this is that you’re a liar, and a fraud, and people will want to rely on you to do something which you claim to, and failure to perform is unprofessional and frankly dangerous, especially if you work in IT like I do. When you have someone prattling on how much they know everything about computers, yet spend 4 whole working days to install a copy of Windows 7, citing that they don’t have to use inferior operating systems, alarm bells start to ring. Furthermore when such bread and butter problems like being able to boot from a USB device on startup, not being able to set a static IP on a printer because “the network is down” or even loading a printer with paper takes an abnormally long amount of time to achieve, you question the integrity of their expertise in light of the fact of their boasting. But that’s the other element of a bullshitter, and that’s BUZZWORDS. Sure the less experienced or less technical may take it on face value and lap it up, but fundamentally the peers who do understand what they’re talking about, and recognise that they’re talking out their arse is always going to be met with derisory reactions. Either you think everyone around you is an idiot, or you’re just coasting through life, getting away with being incompetent and the fact that you shouldn’t have a job in the first place.

If all of these apply to you, don’t be surprised if people don’t like you and have no time for you.